The Continuing Battle Of Darkness Against The Light
The following is excerpted from Dan’s blog: Sic Et Non. To read the full article, CLICK HERE.
Three decades ago, I sat on the Mount of Olives watching a column of Israeli tanks move slowly down the main road in the Kidron Valley. The yearning words of the agnostic Oxford classicist and poet A. E. Housman came forcefully to mind. Addressing Jesus, he prayed:
If in that Syrian Garden, ages slain,You sleep, and know not you are dead in vain,Nor even in dreams behold how dark and brightAscends in smoke and fire by day and nightThe hate you died to quench and could but fan,Sleep well and see no morning, Son of Man.But if, the grave rent and the stone rolled by,At the right hand of majesty on highYou sit, and sitting so remember yetYour fears, your agony and bloody sweat,Your cross and passion and the life you gave,Bow hither out of heaven and see and save.
Not far from Bethlehem is Golgotha where, after the infant cradled in that manger had grown to manhood, he confronted evil and, in some incomprehensible manner, defeated it.
Steps away, he rose from the dead.
Though we sometimes despair, in the end “the wrong shall fail, the right prevail, with peace on earth, good will to men.”